ns sewed on, as well as
to discuss new books and keep pace with her husband intellectually? Do you
suppose because I know Greek that I cannot be in love? Do you suppose
because I went through higher mathematics that I never pressed a flower he
gave me? Do you imagine that Biology kills blushing in a woman? Do you
think that Philosophy keeps me from crying myself to sleep when I think he
doesn't care for me, or growing idiotically glad when he tells me he does?
What rubbish people write upon this subject! Even Pope proved that he was
only a man when he said,

"'Love seldom haunts the breast where learning lies,
And Venus sets ere Mercury can rise.'

"Did you ever read such foolishness?"

"Often, my dear, often. But console yourself. A wiser than Pope says, 'The
learned eye is still the loving one.'"

"Browning, of course. I ought not to be surprised that the prince of poets
should be clever enough to know that. It is from his own experience. 'Who
writes to himself, writes to an eternal public.' You see, Ruth, men can't
help looking at the question from the other side, because they form the
other side. You might cram a woman's head with all the wisdom of the ages,
and while it would frighten every man who came near her into hysterics, it
wouldn't keep her from going down abjectly before some man who had sense
enough to know that higher education does not rob a woman of her
womanliness. Depend upon it, Ruth, when it does, she would have been
unwomanly and masculine if she hadn't been able to read. And it is the man
who marries a woman of brains who is going to get the most out of this
life."

"Men don't want clever wives," I said feebly.

"Clever men don't. Why is it that all the brightest men we know have
selected girls who looked pretty and have coddled them? Look at Bronson
and Flossy. That man is lonesome, I tell you, Ruth. He actually hungers
and thirsts for his intellectual and moral affinity, and yet even he did
not have the sense--the astuteness--to select a wife who would have stood
at his side, instead of one who lay in a wad at his feet. Oh, the
bungling marriages that we see! I believe one reason is that like seldom
marries like. For my part I do not believe in the marriage of opposites.
Look at Robert Browning and his wife. That is my ideal marriage. Their art
and brains were married, as well as their hands and hearts. It is pure
music to think of it. And, to me, the most pathetic poem in the E